Yep! Unreliability in remembering is typically associated with someone known to possess an eidetic memory.

I can see that becoming a staple of YS. Old Sheldon narrating and setting a scene based upon his memories and then seeing the actual event play out differently. No doubt we will all come to reflect warmly on the established canon of Sheldon's childhood filled with accounts of being bullied, tormented, having his ass kicked, victimized by birds, and the many other delightful remembrances he has already shared. How can this be? By the program deliberately establishing that OS's memories are inaccurate, embellished, or just completely incorrect.

On a side note: Am I the only one that finds the following disturbing?:

Elizabeth Loftus studies false memories. As she describes in her TED Talk,The fiction of memory, she has implanted erroneous memories of childhood trauma into adult study subjects as part of her work.

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Yep! Unreliability in remembering is typically associated with someone known to possess an eidetic memory.

I can see that becoming a staple of YS. Old Sheldon narrating and setting a scene based upon his memories and then seeing the actual event play out differently. No doubt we will all come to reflect warmly on the established canon of Sheldon's childhood filled with accounts of being bullied, tormented, having his ass kicked, victimized by birds, and the many other delightful remembrances he has already shared. How can this be? By the program deliberately establishing that OS's memories are inaccurate, embellished, or just completely incorrect.

On a side note: Am I the only one that finds the following disturbing?:

Elizabeth Loftus studies false memories. As she describes in her TED Talk,The fiction of memory, she has implanted erroneous memories of childhood trauma into adult study subjects as part of her work.

To quote Amy in The Itchy Brain Simulation (which was on last night ---TBS?---) "that's diabolical!"

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On a side note: Am I the only one that finds the following disturbing?:

Elizabeth Loftus studies false memories. As she describes in her TED Talk,The fiction of memory, she has implanted erroneous memories of childhood trauma into adult study subjects as part of her work.

That does sound disturbing on the face of it, but might not be as bad as the problem she aimed to highlight. The work may have been a response to the circa 1980s wave where therapists and self-help gurus became convinced vast numbers of people were repressing traumatic incidents which their therapeutic help could bring to the fore. Instead, it seemed that otherwise unharmed people were convinced they had traumatic memories that did not exist until they were led in that direction. Incidents that may not have occurred then led to criminal investigations.

According to Wikipedia, her research could not for obvious reasons involve making people believe they were victims of serious crimes, so instead she tested whether it was possible to convince people they had been left at malls just with the power of suggestion and leading questions. People would start to imagine what that might have looked like through questioning and apparently 25% of the people came to believe it had actually happened. Some people still objected on ethical grounds, understandably. But it seems given the seriousness of the wave of repressed memories being recovered, many of which led to court cases for serious crimes, maybe the reseach was a lesser evil?

IIRC, the era of recovered memories was covered in a chapter of the book "Mistakes Were Made, but Not By Me", which covered a lot of the mental fallacies humans exhibit including problems with memory.

As it turns out, however, the accuracy of many eidetic images is far from perfect. In fact, besides often being sketchy on some details, it is not unusual for eidetikers to alter visual details and even to invent some that were never in the original. This suggests that eidetic images are certainly not photographic in nature but instead are reconstructed from memory and can be influenced like other memories (both visual and nonvisual) by cognitive biases and expectations.

Sheldon Cooper: Photographic is a misnomer; I have an eidetic memory, as I've told you many times, most recently last year during lunch on the afternoon of May 7th. You had turkey and complained it was dry.

Sheldon: April 12th, 2005, Bob’s Big Boy, Toluca Lake. Raj had just introduced us to Priya for the first time, and she was enjoying the sweet taste of Hindu rebellion in the form of a Bob’s Super Big Boy hamburger. In order to preserve your friendship, you and Howard made a pinky swear that neither of you would attempt to woo her. I had a patty melt.

I am sure there are numerous other references and examples of Sheldon's memory skills. In more recent times less attention has been given and on numerous occasions his memory has been less solid. The point is, Sheldon was established as having perfect (or very near) recall.

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Besides the issue of accuracy of the actual events there is also the issue of intepretation. For instance, Sheldon might describe Leonard as a completely irrational guy because he chose the well being of his wife/girlfriend over Sheldon's (whose wishes should be gratified for the best of science and humanity) many times. He also says Leonard, a guy with an IQ estimated at 173, is a "simpleton", average guy. He might also describe Howard in a way that makes him seem like a maintainance man.

If you are expecting a smaller but similar The Big Bang Theory in CBS’ new series Young Sheldon, you might want to re-calibrate your expectations. Debuting with a preview September 25 following the Season 11 premiere of Chuck Lorre and Bill Prady’s Emmy-winning science geek blockbuster, the prequel series created by Lorre and Steven Molaro is way more Wonder Years meets Friday Night Lights....